650 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



stripping is quite light, and a very large quantity of rock remains within 

 easy reach. 



This bed is very soon lost as it is followed to the other side of the river, 

 the strong easterly dip carrying it below the surface in three or four 

 miles from the exposures here named. It agrees in color with the 

 Waverly brown stone, as well as in geological position. The brown 

 color of both is due to a change in the oxide of iron which the stone 

 contains, and it is always limited to a few feet upon the exposed edges 

 of the quarries. 



This course has thus been shown to extend for at least twenty miles 

 along the Scioto valley, on both sides of the river. A very large amount 

 of building stone, scarcely surpassed in the State in desirable qualities, 

 is contained in it, which is sure to find its way into the general market. 



A single quarry has lately been opened on the Clemons farm, a mile 

 above the Higby quarries, and at an horizon higher by ninety feet than 

 the latter. The quarry shows two courses of the highest degree of ex- 

 cellence, separated by a shaly parting of one or two inches. The lower 

 course is twenty inches thick and the upper one thirty-six inches. It is 

 not probable that these courses extend as widely as the Gregg or Buena 

 Vista stone, but few points having been observed at which it was shown. 



An interesting section of this portion of the geological series of the 

 county is shown in the district now under consideration, on the south 

 bank of Stony Creek, very near its mouth. The uppermost twenty-five 

 feet of the Waverly shales appear here. Above them the Waverly 

 quarry courses, sometimes reduced to two in number, and not exceeding 

 six feet in thickness, are shown in a nearly vertical wall. The Waverly 

 stone is of the worthless variety already described. It is overlain by 

 twenty- seven feet of the Waverly black slate, the heaviest section of 

 this stratum yet reported in southern Ohio, fifty feet above which come 

 in the Buena Vista beds, or the Gregg and Higby quarry stone. Ascend- 

 ing still another fifty feet, and a Waverly conglomerate is found. This 

 is one of the very few points on the west side of the Scioto in which 

 this formation appears. Its outcrop here is within sight of the great 

 wall of Carboniferous conglomerate on the east side of the river, but it 

 belongs to an horizon several hundreds of feet lower than that held by 

 the latter. It is made up entirely of quartz pebbles, some of them hav- 

 ing a diameter of four inches. This stratum is shown at several other 

 points in the same neighborhood, at least by its waste, but it must be set 

 down as exceptional rather than as a normal element of the county scale. 

 It is interesting largely from the fact that it seems to constitute the 

 westernmost extension of the great conglomerate that Prof. Andrews 

 has described in the region to the north-east of this. 



